
The felling of forests, the plundering of seas and soils, and the pollution of air and water are together pushing the natural world to the brink.
That's the warning more than 500 experts in 50 countries are expected to give in a major UN-backed report, due to be published on Monday. The assessment will highlight the losses that have hit the natural world over the past 50 years and how the future is looking bleak for tens to hundreds of thousands of species. The document, from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), is also expected to set out an urgent rescue plan for nature. So what do we know about the health of the planet in terms of biodiversity (the variety of living things on Earth and the ecosystems they belong to)?1. The world's biodiversity is vanishing fast
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is a critical measure of our impact on nature. Almost 100,000 species have been assessed so far for this inventory of endangered species. Of these, more than a quarter are threatened with extinction, ranging from Madagascar's lemurs to amphibians like frogs and salamanders, and plants such as conifers and orchids.

2. Among the biggest threats to wildlife are habitat loss, climate change and pollution
According to a recent study, while climate change is a growing threat, the main drivers of biodiversity decline continue to be the loss of natural habitat to farming for food, fuel and timber, and the overexploitation of plants and animals by humans through logging, hunting and fishing.
3. Animals and plants are disappearing and so is the land they rely upon for natural habitat
Land degradation through human activities is negatively affecting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people and pushing the planet towards a sixth mass extinction, according to IPBES. The main drivers are unsustainable agriculture and forestry, climate change, and, in some areas, urban expansion, roads and mining. Land degradation includes forest loss and, while globally this loss has slowed due to reforestation and plantations, it has accelerated in tropical forests that contain some of the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth. Around 12 million hectares of forest in the world's tropical regions were lost in 2018, equivalent to 30 football fields per minute, according to a recent report.

4. Habitat conversion drives biodiversity loss
According to IPBES, only a quarter of land on Earth is substantively free of the impacts of human activities. This is projected to decline to just one-tenth by 2050. "The issue of land use is central to the major environmental challenges we are experiencing," Prof Mercedes Bustamante of the University of Brasilia told BBC News. Since 2001, Indonesia has lost millions of hectares of pristine rainforest. Losses in 2018 declined by around 40% thanks to stricter government legislation and a wet period that limited forest fires, but nonetheless palm oil plantations have gradually eroded the only remaining habitats of endangered orang-utan populations.
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